Don’t Call This a Newspaper
The NYT embodies an unfolding story of deep changes in media. Connecting Mamdani and Fuentes. The slow death of the adman.
Good morning…
On this week’s PvA we talk about how Zohran Mamdani, Nick Fuentes and Sam Altman are all signs of how charisma is now the ultimate currency in creating your own reality.
We did a bit deeper on why the New York Times has proven to the exception to the rule in publishing, as most publishers are dealing with “toxic” pageview assets.
Plus: The Great Compression has arrived for ad agencies.
POD 159: The Charisma Dividend
Out Friday AM. Substack | Apple | Spotify
Five takes from the episode:
TROY
1. Dare we connect Zohran Mamdani and Nick Fuentes?
Both are populist communicators fluent in the grammar of platforms. Both succeed by substituting moral clarity for complexity. Both draw power by connecting social and political movements and channeling the energy of fandoms.
Mamdani can dance and has an easy, joyful presence. He makes people feel good and speaks in plain, shareable language. Fuentes is a debate club troll who turns hatred into attention.
Mamdani showed that young voters choose vibes and values over free market threats of NYC’s inevitable demise. Fuentes offers a fast-talking, retrograde vision of progress that appeals to people who feel left behind.
Each is a mirror of the same media moment — different messages, same algorithmic logic — proof that populist energy can cut across the old right/left lines.
2. Don’t call this a newspaper
The NYT added 460,000 subscribers last quarter. Growth is accelerating. I promise not to mention games, cooking, or the bundle as the growth formula. To me their success suggests a few things:
This is not a newspaper business. Thinking of it that way misses the point. It’s an information-and-utility service for liberal households. Reference the energy they are putting behind the $30 “Family Plan”. Today’s NYT doesn’t fit neatly into old-fashioned media categories.
Better to think of it like Netflix. Yes, Netflix has 20 times the subs, but revenue per user is converging in the mid-teens for both. Both are extremely good at product. Both are a family utility. The Times’ total addressable market is bigger than people assume.
Every 1 million subscriber additions adds ≈ $120 million a year in recurring revenue. Every +10% increase in ARPU adds ≈ $150 million more. That’s a lot of free cash to invest in becoming the next thing. The flywheel is accelerating.
CNN is the closest comparable in news with important differences. Its legacy cable ARPU is < $2. The new CNN bundle is $6.99. Even at that price it is gonna be a tough sell. The Times is a premium product. Right now, CNN would love to look more like it.
CNN’s product experience is awful. While they would love to have the new “CNN Access” product catch people before they cut the cord… try authenticating with your cable provider and see what you get. The cable news format doesn’t translate to the modern mobile world. Video and text integration is crap. It’s a long way from something you will pay for… at any price.
Indeed, the NYT can become CNN faster than CNN can fix itself. The Times is the new cable news. Watch this transition take place in the new video feed on the NYT app and on social media.
Turns out, the Times was better suited than others to survive digital disruption. The internet destroyed barriers of geography and content type. It allows the times to compete in the moment. The market opportunity is now as big as newspapers and cable news and lifestyle media. Only point-of-view alignment and curiosity contain the company’s addressable market. Video will expand the market. They will beat their 2027 15 million sub goal.
3. A career category is disappearing
Early in my career, I spent a few years inside agencies. It was a good time to be in advertising — a safe, interesting path for people who didn’t want to chase consulting, finance, or law. Good gigs, especially for hybrids who could mix business, cultural awareness and creative labour.
Those days are gone. WPP is the most exposed. Its market cap has fallen 75 % in five years to about $4 billion — roughly 0.2 % of Google’s value. Each of the big three holdcos (Omnicom / IPG, Publicis, WPP) still employ more than 100,000 people. It’s going to be carnage over the next couple of years. Amazon’s recent 14,000 front-office house cleaning is just a taste of what is to come.
I’m not convinced boutique shops or the “creator economy” will fill the gap. The likely result: more white-collar anxiety, and a scramble among young people to invent livelihoods inside the new AI hustle economy.
BRIAN
4. NYT TV is a test
An underrated aspect of how well the Times has done is it has thrived as a product under a CEO from the advertising side. The pivot to subscriptions happened prior to Meredith Levien getting the top job in 2000.
I’ve been impressed by the NYT’s video emphasis. The addition of a Watch tab to the app is an important test of whether it can “become CNN.” The Times has done well in audio, and video is a natural next step, as well as a test of how it can produce its own “stars” from its journalists.
The one area I’m less excited about is international. The NYT is a big brand in America but news remains localized, unlike Netflix, which has 70% of its subscribers outside North America. I did a podcast with Meredith back in 2017, when she was COO, and she talked up the “300 million college-educated English speakers.” (That became a derided part of the Semafor launch pitch.) News brands are tough to make work internationally in a meaningful way.
If there a lesson for publishers, it’s likely the obvious: The Times succeeded by being audience-and product-centric.
ALEX
5. Bubbles are like wars
The AI tone has shifted here from “it’s not a bubble” to “it’s definitely a bubble but bubbles are good”. You see, bubbles are like wars. Lots of bad stuff happens but sometimes you land a man on the moon when it’s behind you.
Bubbles are moments where the conditions give ordinary people incredible courage to try stupid and hard things and, at scale and in time, this can benefit all of us. In this case it’ll likely be a ton of additional power that’ll pair nicely with all the dark fiber we were blessed with the last time.
I’m no pessimist. I believe AI is a transformational technology with a lot more going on than chatbots and generative video. Something built on top of the AI stack will change the world, but that doesn’t mean that the value will be captured by the people spending trillions today to make it possible. AI looks like it’s on its way to become infrastructure itself and it will support many billion dollar ideas but it’s uncertain if we will see OpenAI recoup their mind-bending investment.
A decent analog is Google Maps (and GPS in phones) which allowed massive multi-billion dollar companies like Airbnb and Uber to exist. Google does fine but it only captured a fraction of that value. The difference is that Google didn’t spend the GDP and power consumption of a European country to make Google Maps real.